Wednesday, May 29, 2013

I... I'm at a loss for words here.

So, the body found under the mobile home by kids playing hide-and-seek in a Bloomington, IN trailer park was ruled dead of natural causes, if we accept that injuries caused by a fall while intoxicated are natural in a trailer park. Given some of the keggers I have attended in... er... "manufactured housing" in my time, I don't see this as that much of a stretch.

But, man, you want to talk about the opposite pole of rural Americana from Sheriff Andy and Aunt Bea, it'd be this. Kids in Mayberry never found Otis dead under a single-wide in any of the episodes I ever saw. (The setting also lacks some of the picturesque qualities for childhood body-finding like those of the Oregon woods in Stand by Me.)

There's also the whole... I mean, was he like a sick cat, who just crawled into the tall grass under an abandoned trailer to die?

26 comments:

  1. I'm guessing it was the Enchanted Forest, and this is a dead elf.

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  2. Stuart the Viking8:16 AM, May 29, 2013

    I spent a few years drunk when I was young and stupid enough to think it would help. With some of the bizarre places that I woke up after drinking myself unconscious, under a trailer doesn't surprise me all that much. It might have happened something like this:

    Dew falling... wet... cold... too drunk to stand... crawl under trailer to get under something... oops dead.

    I woke up under a car once using a very similar drunk logic thread. Luckily, I missed the "oops dead" part, but being I was under someone's car, it was probably just sheer luck.

    s

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  3. My guess is he fell and couldn't walk and it was raining and he crawled under the trailer for shelter. Or it was a drone strike and the .gov is covering it up, one or the other.

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  4. "Or it was a drone strike and the .gov is covering it up, one or the other."

    Well, you know, we get those in Indiana. ;)

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  5. I always wondered why they changed locale from Maine to Oregon for the movie.

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    Replies
    1. Because if it was set in Maine everyone would know it was written by Steven King. Everyone would be waiting for zombie clowns or malevolent cars to kill Wesley Crusher and be disappointed when it didn't happen. I know he wasn't Wesley Crusher yet, but time travel is confusing.

      -anfo

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  6. I would assume that it was some combination of labor laws and proximity to Hollywood.

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  7. Having been that drunk myself, I find Stuart's scenario plausible.

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  8. I found the town drunk in the woods near his shack. At fourteen it sticks in your head. He had been dead some time. This was not Mayberry.

    OTOH, the sick cat thing is probably spot on. Cirrhosis, I'm told, is not pretty nor does it leave you thinking clearly.

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  9. I'm in shock that you've attended a trailer park kegger, Tam.

    Witty snark usually doesn't mesh well with that crowd (voice of experience speaking).

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  10. The article says "feet were emerging from under a home". Sounds like Zombie feet. Maybe they could have chosen a better word.

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  11. Where better for a bunch of eleven year olds to go smoke weed?

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  12. Man, a day at work for you is like steroids for the cynicism gland, isn't it? ;)

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  13. Ancient Woodsman10:59 AM, May 29, 2013

    Must be "kids find a body week" - here's the news for the one around here yesterday. The three kids were on 'senior skip day' from school, checking out the restricted part of the old fort and found the guy was hanging 15' down an ammo shaft, handcuffed behind his back. "Nothing suspicious," according to the PD. Maybe not King's Maine, but you can see it right across the harbor from where this guy was.

    http://www.seacoastonline.com/articles/20130529-NEWS-305290378

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  14. Maybe he was a witch and the trailer fell on him. Where are his ruby Chuck Taylors my pretty?

    Gerry

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  15. "feet were emerging from under a home"

    Shades of "''Salem's Lot"!

    And like Stuart, I've been in places/conditions where crawling under a trailer seemed a Good Idea at the time. Never woke up under one though...

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  16. Ancient Woodsman12:21 PM, May 29, 2013

    The subject of today's story didn't wake up under one, either.

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  17. And that is one of many reasons why I will live out of my car before I live in a trailer.

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  18. See? Barney wasn't a nasty little martinet. He was just looking out for Otis's health and welfare.

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  19. Joanna:

    Some houses and attached structures have space under them that are termed "crawlspaces".

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  20. My "favorite" was collecting the pieces after the motorcycle accident. Sometimes, it was pile it all in one bag and let the coroner & funeral home sort it out.

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  21. Anyone know the whereabouts of the Wurster kid's burrow owl when this occurred?

    You know what, Stuart? I LIKE YOU. You're not like the other
    people, here, in the trailer park.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=71PNZH1OaW0

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  22. The best line I've ever heard came from a drunk college girl the PD found passed out under a car:

    "But officer, it's not dangerous! I know that tire and I know that tire. I'd never sleep between two tires I didn't know!"

    Sometimes, the logic involved is decidedly non-Euclidean.

    That phrase was well quoted around the rescue station for quite a few weeks, though.

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  23. Will: It's not the existence of the crawlspace that I find objectionable. It's the fact that, instead of a foundation, the only thing keeping drunks and critters out from under a trailer is a flimsy piece of textured plastic, if you're lucky.

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  24. So Yoon at the Sunsong Ranch is telling little kids to dig in the Dark Earth under his trailer house?

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  25. Hey, I was so whacked out of my head on sleep dep on one exercise, I almost curled up in a truck rut in the road for a nap. . . the Ents told me to do it. . .

    No, I'm not joking.

    And that was sans chemical enhancement.

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